“Dark Age Ahead” was published in 2004, when science and engineering experts still enjoyed some respect from the American masses, albeit a semi-religious variety based on credentialism, still-novel consumer technology, and not-yet faded memories of the mid-20th-century space race and medical breakthroughs. The rest of Prince Bush’s term wiped that out, and the Know-Nothing backlash against an educated African-American being President put a definitive end to it. Even a pessimistic curmudgeon like Jacobs (who died in 2006) couldn’t imagine that things could have gone bad so quickly.
